As the number of vehicles on the road increases, so does the probability of collisions between vehicles. While some collisions are unavoidable, other collisions may be prevented if adequate warning of the potential collision is provided to a vehicle controller or a vehicle operator. Systems have been developed to provide such warnings. Active cruise control (ACC) is an example of such a system. However, as ACC is limited to the detection range of the vehicle's sensors, ACC will fail to respond to potential collision events outside of the vehicle's sensor field. Other systems attempt to solve the problem of assessing collision risk by the use of high resolution RADAR, LIDAR, and stereo vision. While useful, such systems suffer from deficiencies such as an inability to see around the corners of buildings and other structures that interfere with photon line of sight, high per vehicle cost, and, in the case of RADAR and LIDAR, from the competitive emission of electromagnetic energy into the environment.
There exists a current need for an accurate and reliable method for collision avoidance that is not constrained by a vehicle's sensors and that does not rely on line-of-sight detection.